Service Systems and Social Enterprise: Beyond the Economics of Business

Header image by @dandimmock via Unsplash

During my master’s degree I published a thesis, titled Service Systems and Social Enterprise: Beyond the Economics of Business. Using the domain of service science as a lens, my thesis explored how social enterprise organizations could inform the unfolding discourse within the service science discipline, which, at its nascent time was primarily focused on applying its conceptual frameworks to for-profit organizations.

My thesis was supervised by Dr. Kelly Lyons, Professor in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.

ABSTRACT:
Service science is an emerging multidisciplinary field concerned with the study of service systems and value co-creation. In recent years, the field has expanded considerably, growing to encompass a community of researchers and practitioners from a range of backgrounds and knowledge domains. However, very little research has focused on the study of service systems within the context of social-purpose organizations (SPOs), such as a nonprofit charitable organization or academic institution. We contend that SPOs represent a class of service systems that are understudied in service science, and the goal of this thesis was to contribute to the ongoing development of the disciplines theoretical foundations through an empirical study of a special type of SPO, the social enterprise. Through case-study research we surveyed five social enterprise organizations across Canada. Our findings point to a number of areas that suggest a conceptual bias towards service systems that are economically motivated and profit driven.

You can click the link below to download and read my thesis in full via TSpace (no registration required!)